A poet's Mind and Musician's Soul (A storybook in rhyme) Edward A. Waples Jr. With illustrations By: Amalia B. Waples, and Raven M. R. Waples Edward A. Waples Jr. is a storyteller. He takes us on a journey through poems that touch on current events, love, spirituality, and the human experience. This is a book of emotional, and thought-provoking poetic stories for the 21st century. Take the journey and enjoy the ride!
An Oliver Sacks Foundation Best Book of the Year Selection, Finalist for the Books for a Better Life "Best First Book” Award, and a People Magazine Pick in nonfiction. The astounding story of a critically ill musician who is saved by music and returns to the same hospital to help heal others Andrew Schulman, a fifty-seven-year-old professional guitarist, had a close brush with death on the night of July 16, 2009. Against the odds—and with the help of music—he survived: a medical miracle. Once fully recovered, Andrew resolved to use his musical gifts to help critically ill patients at Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s ICU. In Waking the Spirit, you’ll learn the astonishing stories of the people he’s met along the way—both patients and doctors—and see the incredible role music can play in a modern hospital setting. Schulman expertly weaves cutting-edge research on neuroscience and medicine, as well as what he’s learned as a professional musician, to explore the power of music to heal the body and awaken the spirit.
A small book with a giant heart-- this is a collection of poems penned by six poets. A fusion of American ,Carribian and Asian sensibilities, It is ultimately a labor of love- of poetic expression, of creativity, of diversity of cultural, personal and professional experiences. Poets who are teachers, software consultants, managers and business owners; this book is a celebration of their passion for poetry. As much an ode to an art form that encourages deliberate reflection and allows for pause in our rushed and automated world, it is also a humble attempt to sanction dreams-their scope and size notwithstanding.
Art is a tool for living, a spiritual calling that all of us must eventually answer. Just as athletes aren't the only ones who need exercise, artists aren't the only ones who need creativity. All of us must exercise creativity on a regular basis to keep our spirit and joy from being diminished. In this age of remote controls, convenience food, and prepackaged everything, our souls are crying out for the spiritual replenishment only offered through a creative practice. Art and Soul takes readers on a year-long journey into their creative souls, offering a map for finding and expressing the art that dwells there. It encourages readers to recapture their authentic self that many abandoned long ago with their Crayola crayons. Even those who swear they can't paint, write, compose, or build can express creativity in everyday activities that revitalize and nourish their spiritual well-being. Art and Soul is divided into 52 weekly chapters, each containing an inspirational message; a creative assignment, and three or four suggestions for fun projects that encourage us to stretch our creative wings. Here are just a few: Go to a thrift store and buy the most outrageous outfit you can.Learn three little-known facts about Martin Luther King Jr..Make sugar cookies shaped like body parts. Come up with the title of your own autobiography.The ideas range from the practical to the ridiculous, but all are easy and fun to complete. This book will show readers that they don't need fancy art supplies or lessons to be creative, and that getting in touch with our creative selves is just as easy as do-re-me. Finally, the perfect book for women who have had it with feeling like the dynamic pulse of life hasfaded and who are looking to recharge their existence. The draining stress and hubbub of the modern world can sometimes make a woman feel like she's just a shell of the fun-loving, vivacious person she once was. To solve this common problem, author Amy Hall presents Getting Your Groove Back, a sassy and hip collection of tips and exercises for women who are eager to reinvigorate life by recapturing their lost but innate Grooviness-the spunk and special aura that used to set them apart from the crowd. This book covers everything a woman needs to know in order to get her career, relationships, and sense of self back on track by standing up to the evil forces of numbness and mediocrity that have taken root! Hall dishes out tough love, provoking insights and advice with a biting humor that just doesn't stop. At the office . . . A tried-but-true confidence builder moves from the bedroom to the office place. Wear really sexy underwear not only on third dates, but also to any dreaded presentation you must give.In relationships . . . Save the money you set aside for the obligatory birthday gift for the friend with whom you are no longer close. Spend it on yourself instead. Go buy a decadent box of chocolate-dipped strawberries from those fine Godiva folks and scarf them under a tree, celebrating your ability to sever the old and seek out the new. That relationship had a place in your past, and guess what, we call it the past for a reason-move on. Besides, the hussy never returned that favorite belt of yours she borrowed; hence, it's time to trot toward evolution.Within the inner self . . . Stop beating yourself up because you're not what you said you'd become when you were a little girl. Okay, so you didn't get an Olympic gold medal or become an ambassador to the UN. It's true our lives don't always deal us the cards we need to get the grandiose life, but get real, you're a born couch potato and you detest politics. Why should you feel guilty any longer for not doing something that doesn't fit your personality anyway? There's nothing wrong with not being a famous athlete or political figure. There's lots of us out here, and we're okay people. Join us. Love us. Become one with us.Getting Your Groove Back is the ultimate book for those who are tired of fluff and want fun self-help with an attitude
A revelatory, indispensable collection of poems from Jane Hirshfield that centers on beauty, time, and the full embrace of an existence that time cannot help but steal from our arms. Hirshfield is unsurpassed in her ability to sink into a moment’s essence and exchange something of herself with its finite music—and then, in seemingly simple, inevitable words, to deliver that exchange to us in poems that vibrate with form and expression perfectly united. Hirshfield’s poems of discovery, acknowledgment of the difficult, and praise turn always toward deepening comprehension. Here we encounter the stealth of feeling’s arrival (“as some strings, untouched, / sound when a near one is speaking. / So it was when love slipped inside us”), an anatomy of solitude (“wrong solitude vinegars the soul, / right solitude oils it”), a reflection on perishability and the sweetness its acceptance invites into our midst (“How suddenly then / the strange happiness took me, / like a man with strong hands and strong mouth”), and a muscular, unblindfolded awareness of our shared political and planetary fate. To read these startlingly true poems is to find our own feelings eloquently ensnared. Whether delving into intimately familiar moments or bringing forward some experience until now outside words, Hirshfield finds for each face of our lives its metamorphosing portrait, its particular, memorable, singing and singular name. Love in August White moths against the screen in August darkness. Some clamor in envy. Some spread large as two hands of a thief who wants to put back in your cupboard the long-taken silver.
\"I got to see her triumph and fall apart. I wept and cheered for her. She was so beautiful and so strong, so weak and hurting, all swept together and intertwined.\" ~ from an included prose piece titled, My Life Story in Music.\r\n\r\nThese are poems from my idyllic youth, my rebellion, my wild abandon, up to my rescue, redemption, and rebirth as a functioning member of society, and a grown woman with a family of my own. In my early days, I wrote about pain, which was easy. The harder thing was to learn to write about all the joy and adventure of being happy and loved. \r\n\r\nIt wasn\"t until later in life that I found my community of artists and really learned to tell the tales from all the angles. I am indebted to the Fresno Rogue Festival, in California, where I first read for an audience and fell in love with receiving a standing ovation. Also, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Rogue Poetry Slam in Southern Oregon, where I learned to do competitive poetry and bring my best, and bring the poetry that I was afraid to share, that made my hands tremble and my voice quake, to sit in awe of the skill of other poets, and sometimes take home the money and win, even with the odds stacked against me, as other poets made the room jump and dance to their words. Oh, sweet victory! \r\n\r\n\"If you have ever loved another, been passionate about anything, mourned a loss, been a parent, heck, been alive - this poet will move you! Her rhythmic words pulse with the beat that promises (like it or not) the continuum of LIFE.\" \r\n~ Patti Thornton, in her review of Liesl Garner\"s 2008 Rogue Festival Poetry Show\r\n\r\n
